Subconscious Ramblings Between A Mother & Son

Near the end of Valley Street Traveling Cinema’s first night of the September 20’ showing, the epilogue to Vangelis’ soundtrack for Chariots of Fire began, and with it the awakening of cyclical memories that mirror the current Trump play that we’ve all been steadily watching through the pandemic. Funny how something often begins to dawn on you at the end of a long night when you haven’t even reached bed yet. I don’t know whether it’s my mother’s die hard love for the republican dream or my intrepid search for truth that was reaching out across the sands of time, but I felt the guiding hand of Jimmy Carter rest upon my shoulder and nudge my intellect to awaken.

As the Vangelis refrain was continuing to play I mused aloud, “why was this tune so lauded in my youth”, in ways that a Hitler youth must have equally mused while listening to Wagner’s music — then it hit me! Chariots of Fire premiered on October 9th, 1981, not 10 months after the Iranian hostage crisis ended, sealing the fate of the Democratic Party with the election of California’s own actor Ronald Reagan (shush— this generations own actor is reading Bedtime for Bonzo to get the children to sleep over at Trump towers). Oh Jimmy, keep your guiding hand steady!

I started to feel that the profound excitement that my generation felt upon hearing that soundtrack was perhaps the effect of a demonic hypnotism from the Republican’s victory and the rise of our soon to be senile president. The Soviet empire was only waiting for the Berlin Wall to be torn down as Springsteen’s Born in the USA ripped through the air. Trump’s followers likewise boogied to a bogarted Tom Petty track — I Won’t Back Down. Universe, you’ve got to cool down on the cyclical memories thing for a minute and let me catch my breath!